Stranded Travelers Cite Old Rule To Get Moving

August 31, 2007|By JULIE JOHNSSON/Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — It served as a secret handshake, of sorts, between airlines and passengers for decades.

Travelers whose flights were delayed, or who simply were running late, would sidle up to ticket counters and whisper, "Rule 240 me." And the airline workers usually would oblige, putting them on the next flight to their destination, even if it were on a rival carrier.

The days of Rule 240 as an official component of the era of regulated air travel are long gone. But in this summer of endless delays, steamed passengers and overcrowded planes, a little bit of the magic behind that phrase has reappeared, with savvy travelers invoking their rights as customers to demand special treatment.

Scott Regenstein, a management consultant who travels the globe, arrived at Washington-Dulles International Airport after a 20-hour flight from South Africa on July 28, only to find his flight home to Boston grounded for mechanical problems.

It would be two days before United Airlines could get him home, Regenstein was told. That's when he asked to be put on another airline, invoking Rule 240.

"None of them had heard of it, and they looked at me like I had three heads," Regenstein said of the United agents' response.

What did work for Regenstein was dropping the industry jargon and pointing out that there were open seats on a US Airways flight to Boston departing that afternoon from a nearby airport. A United worker promptly rebooked him and gave him a $50 taxi voucher.

Rule 240 once served as airlines' playbook for dealing with delayed or stranded passengers. Its strictures for dispensing meal vouchers, providing lodging and putting displaced passengers on the next available flight were mandated by the Civil Aeronautics Board, which used to tightly monitor every facet of airline operations in the U.S.

Although it was abolished in 1978 along with heavy federal oversight of the industry, Rule 240's precepts remained industry practice into the 1990s. This summer, as passengers' frustration and sense of helplessness have mounted amid an air system pushed to its limits, bloggers have resurrected the regulation-era rule as a talisman for travelers.

Added lifestyle site DailyCandy: "And though it's pretty dorky, you should carry a copy of the airline's 240 rules. It'll come in handy when employees don't know, or don't tell, about the policy."

Perhaps. Although some airlines still carry remnants of the original provisions on their books, none of them offers ironclad guarantees of quick remedies for travelers trapped in strange cities because of missed connections and canceled flights. Many airline workers hired this decade aren't familiar with the rule, either.

Now, airlines tend to keep stranded passengers within their system, even if it means waiting for flights that leave days later, rather than placing them on another carrier.

That doesn't reflect a formal shift in policy, the airlines say. Rather, it is a consequence of record-high load factors, a measure of the percentage of seats sold on flights, at all major carriers as the U.S. airline industry recovers from its recent financial tailspin.

"There is less ability to reaccommodate on other carriers because their flights are full, and they are equally impacted by weather cancellations at the same airports," said American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner. "A 75 percent load factor was considered astronomically high in the 1990s. Now it's not unusual to have 100 percent load factors in high-demand markets on the most desirable midday flights across all carriers."

Skeptics think that airlines' relentless cost-cutting is also a factor in their seeming reluctance to reroute stranded people these days.

It often is cheaper to put a displaced passenger on a later flight on the same carrier, even if it means putting that person up overnight in a hotel room, said Anolik, author of "Traveler's Rights." If a passenger is traveling on a discounted ticket, then the carrier transferring him or her to another airline has to make up the difference between the booked fare and the going rate for the seat he or she will occupy, he said. *